May 1, 2016

He has a tender ego, pouty tweets, needy temperament and obsession with hand sanitizer...

I'll be the good feminist and object to pinning these traits on women.

... whereas she is so tough and combat-hardened, she’s known by her staff as “the Warrior.”...

He can sound belligerent... But he says that in most cases he would rather do the art of the deal than shock and awe....

[Hillary] has long had hawkish tendencies.... But Hillary never expected to meet this mix of dove, hawk and isolationist. She thought she would face Marco Rubio, a more traditional conservative who would out-hawk her. Instead, she’s meeting Trump, who is “a sheep in wolf’s clothing,” as Axelrod put it. Like a free-swinging asymmetric boxer, Trump can keep Hillary off balance by punching from both the left and the right.

A free-swinging asymmetric boxer... is that not masculine?

[Hillary] loves the gruff, Irish, bearlike demeanor of Jack Keane, a retired four-star general and the resident hawk on Fox News who helped define her views on military issues and is still in touch. As secretary of state, she hit it off with Gen. Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus. And she loved to have a stiff drink with Bob Gates and John McCain. She has a weakness for big, swaggering, rascally he-men.

Like Donald Trump.

Loving he-men — is that not feminine? There's quite a jam-up of gender stereotypes here. Mostly, Dowd wants to say that Hillary is more of a war hawk than Trump, and it's a problem for her because she'd planned to find herself in the middle militarily. But much of Dowd's column relies on admiration of masculinity, which is used to pump up Hillary's image and to diminish Trump. It is a potentially funny twist to portray Trump as effeminate. His showy masculinity is only a cover for a female psyche — which, I guess, in our new heyday of transgenderism, nontroglodytes are allowed to believe in again.

100 comments:

After decades and decades of identity politics and playing the victim card, the Republican party is on the verge of nominating a man who is a master of identity politics and playing the victim card. If liberals suspect that they have given birth to this monster, yes, you have. Thanks for teaching this shit in the universities for so long!

I loathe the idea of four years of white man identity politics and white man crybaby tactics. Quit whining, you billionaire, and grow up already. You're a senior citizen! If you keep crying about how the world is unfair to you, I'm going to start doing a diaper check.

... whereas she is so tough and combat-hardened, she’s known by her staff as “the Warrior.”...

This would bring to mind a quote from 'Once Upon A Time In The West:

"Morton: You'll never succeed in becoming like me.Frank: Why?Morton: Because there are many things you'll never understand.[Frank draws on Morton as he pulls out money from a drawer]Morton: This is one of 'em. You see, Frank, there are many kinds of weapons, and the only one that can stop that is this."

It all depends on the traits you focus upon. But winning is really genderless, and losing is really genderless.

A better discernment is between a life of patience and satisfaction, which is a 2,000 year old Christian tradition (See, Monastaries), or a life of Raiding Attacks looting other tribe's stuff, and raping their women, and enslaving their children which is a 12,000 year old pagan tradition ( See, Vikings and Mongols.)

Gender is not the trait to look for. The issue is whether a culture's goals reward leaders of both sexes who are honorable Gentlemen or Ladies, or instead its goals reward The Leader who is a Skilled Killer and Conquistador that captures loot for everbody to share.

So Clinton the warrior will need to increase defense spending massively in order to be the warrior. Clinton, trying to be more of a socialist than Bernie , will need to increase domestic spending massively. Hey, let's just quadruple the national debt while were at it.

According to Dowd, The Donald is a man of contridictions. Soft and hard. Gentle and ruthless. Dove and hawk. Sinatra disciple and closet metrosexual. Trump probaly believed that tag line from Superman, "...truth, justice and the American way."Sounds like just the fellow we need to deal with jihadists, communists and law breakers.

I get the strategy of hitting Trump where he is strong, it's part of the game of combat. However Trump seems to be maneuvering himself to the dovish side using his weird, energetic judo. He's pitching Hillary as a war hawk, with him as a sensible isolationist candidate. Will he actually pull off a coalition of pacifists and patriots???? I think he can. The pacifists can't think Hillary has much to offer, they might take a chance on Trump. Seriously.

That Trump is a whiny crybaby -- and you can even add in the p-word -- is undeniable from the tantrums he throws when he gets outmanuvered and loses, and from how he is constantly saying that he is going to sue, like the kid who says he's going to tell mom or the teacher if he doesn't get his way.

"I'll be the good feminist and object to pinning these traits on women" Umm, no. Dowd is the good and authentic feminist here: using gender stereotypes to cast a woman in a favorable light. Corollary to Althouse Law: whatever can be used to present women favorably, will be.

I seem to recall a post that identified greatness in artists with combining masculine and feminine qualities. Do they exist, or not? Or does it depend on what the meaning of "exist" is?

Hasn't Paglia already endorsed Trump?Maybe not in so many words.Anyway, Dowd is silly. The way these things work is its not the executive as a person, largely, they are figureheads of a coalition of supporters and bureaucratic factions. You aren't electing a person, you are electing a collective body. That's certainly the case with Bush, Clinton and Obama.Dowd is wrong about the militaristic nature of Clinton, to a degree. Clinton works within the same tribe as Obama, in most cases as we have seen through the last administration. Clinton's picks in DOD would be much like Obamas, at one point Leon Panetta, a Clinton man tried and true, etc., as also the vast majority in domestic policy. If you want to know what Clintons policies will be, as opposed to her PR, you are seeing it now, these are the same people. Much of the concern about Trump is that he has done all this without a political "tribe"; he hasn't got a Trump faction in the government, in the agencies, in the universities, in the think tanks, there is no gang of likely appointees waiting for the call, there is no well connected shadow cabinet (I like the Spanish term "camarilla", English could use it). Since a great number of the problems of the US are the fault of deficiencies in the " tribes", this is and of course has been a selling point for Trump.

MoDo says that the Hildebeest 'hit it off" with General Petraeus? He who was called General Betray Us by the left wing mob? He of whom Hillary said, "accepting his testimony requires the willing suspension of disbelief"?

MoDo either was three sheets to the wind after a pitcher of martinis--or else was keeping her head in a deep dark place--when she wrote that line. Pull it out MoDo, look around, and remember what was said and done before writing such piffle.

Althouse, you really need to get prof help for your addiction to the NY Times. There must be one of those 30 day rehab facilities you could check into after the semester is over. And I bet Obamacare mandates that your health insurance pick up the tab.

You know, the smart set always acts like every observation they make is true, but they can't ALL be true.

Is Trump far-fight Hitler, or a Democrat in disguise?

Is Trump an ur-masculine he-man misogynist, or a sensitive man behind a brash exterior?

Is he the ultimate capitalist the left should fear, or a secret socialist because he had to grease govt to build his buildings?

It's all quite hilarious, of course, because at this point, anyone paying attention can clearly see that truth doesn't make a bit of difference to the anti-Trump zealots. Principles and ethics be damned, stop him!

What they really fear is populism, which is also known as the people having a voice. Also, you silly gooses who fear Trump will do 'whatever he wants' are delusional. The only protection Trump has from the elite is the support of the people. The media, the pundits, Hell, the ENTIRE WORLD is going to be watching him like a hawk. Everyone isn't going to look the other way like they did Obama.

To clarify my first comment, the Republican party has long been on the receiving end of identity politics and playing-the-victim card. Trump accepts this framing. He believes in identity politics. He has identified "victims" and is trying to get them to vote for him. To put it in right-wing terms, he's an ambulance-chasing scumbag lawyer. Except he's never been to law school and has no regard for the law. He just wants to identify a bunch of angry people, make them angrier, and use them to make himself richer and more powerful. He's a big fan of Al Sharpton, and has adopted his tactics and is applying them to white people.

I, for one, look forward to the "warrior" Hillary turning the entire Executive Branch of the Federal Government into her personal retribution machine, in her ongoing vendetta against those who dared to honestly call her husband a serial sexual harasser, a rapist, adulterer and blatant liar, and herself a corrupt, venal, lying incompetent.

That those who did tell the truth about her corruption, her lies, her marriage and her incompetence encompass the entire population of the country (maybe minus Chelsea) makes the vendetta both more horrible to contemplate, from my perspective as an ordinary citizen, and easier to succeed in carrying out, from Hillary's perspective as a deranged "warrior" against everyone else.

Her first term will be a success if and only if there is not a US city left a smoking ruin from a nuclear attack during her term of office.

And the successor to Hillary's presidency will likely be fighting wars from the South China Sea to Sweden.

I will enjoy watching you speak freely when the woman who enables tiny skulls to be crushed in utero is elected because of your puerile objections to Donald Trump.

Puerile means juvenile, right? Don't make me google it.

One of the basic problems I have with Donnie is that he might be better than Hillary, or worse than Hillary. I know HIllary is bad, and I will not vote for her. But it's simply not true that Hillary is the worst possible President. When Bobby Knight says vote for Donnie because he's not afraid to drop an A-bomb, I go, "okay, that would be worse." I'm not a fan of mushroom clouds.

Also I dislike trade wars and taxes. Among other things, Donnie is promising to raise taxes on imports, which will make the costs of many things that I buy (like clothes) more expensive. His idea is that he is "protecting" our textile industry. And maybe he is, but now my clothes are more expensive. Plus those pesky foreigners often feel like retaliating, which means markets are closed to our products, so the mills close down anyway. I am a big free trade guy and I think many Americans are spoiled rotten. They have no idea of all the blessings of free trade! And so they think economic war on foreigners won't cost us anything.

Trump "believes in identity politics. He has identified "victims" and is trying to get them to vote for him. To put it in right-wing terms, he's an ambulance-chasing scumbag lawyer. Except he's never been to law school and has no regard for the law. He just wants to identify a bunch of angry people, make them angrier, and use them to make himself richer and more powerful."__________________

In other words, as I've noted before, Trump is Clintonian. There is a lot of Clintonista in his followers too.

Hillary is an Amazonian beast with no sexuality whose every molecule of testosterone is directed into a lust for power. The only sexual charge she gets (if that, even) is out of being in charge, and I don't mean in the bedroom.

How extensive do these "analyses" have to be, anyway? We've seen her type before - from Bloody Mary through Katherine the Great. They're really not all that interesting or usually even effective. Men need no lecture on the pitfalls of where narcissistic self-righteousness leads when mixed with political power. Moreover, Hillary is an amalgam of the nastiest manipulative she-wolves of the American dating world nowadays; so if you don't know her type by now you'd either have to be literally blind or socially blind.

Men know her type. They've dated her (or avoided dating her) before. And they've dumped her more times than you care to know.

People who exist for their lust for power aren't a bit unusual, R&B. They exist in every hierarchy. I have run into them from lower supervisorial levels to the boardrooms. Heck, I worked for enough of them. I even liked a few. It's like admiring a predator. Best done from a distance, but survivable even close up, with some practice. Clinton is not a bit unusual in that.

So Trump is playing to "identity politics" by reaching out to Americans who have been screwed for decades. He's Clintonian because he openly identifies with America. I guess we are only allowed to have progressive internationalists who don't protect Western Civilization as president now? National identity is apparently off limits.

What a joke, Croix. I agree with you on your pro-life stance, but you have let your emotions get to your head. All these "true conservatives" only want to force the rest of us to agree. They want a candidate exactly like THEM. No compromise.

Does everyone see now why abortion and social issues are used every single election? It divides us. It's on purpose.

The only military intervention that Hillary has ever voted against was the surge in Iraq. Dowd didn't mention that interesting fact. Thought I'd bring that inadvertent oversight to everyone's attention........Hillary was best buds with Petraeus and MacChrystal. You can see how their careers prospered after making friends with her. The careers of our two most successful generals ended in disgrace. Not by accident. If only Eisenhowerhad been forced to resign because of his illicit relationship with his driver, the world would have been spared he despotism of his regime and America would have known the peace and bounty of the Stevenson era.

Saint Croix, Consider that Trump is using some of the lefts strategy and tactics against them. It's not a nice way to fight, but turnabout is fair play. Like the Allies deploying poison gas in 1915 in response to the Germans.

The only addition I would make to Trad Guy's excellent 7:48 comment is that we do not know if Donnie is a "skilled killer" or whether he was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.

We do know that he is excellent at name-calling and insulting people, skills I mastered in fourth grade. I was king of the insults! But as I went through life I discovered that it's not that rewarding a pursuit, and I dropped it. I still have my skills, though, so watch out.

We know that Trump has 1004 delegates, as per the last count I've seen. He got them by - what? Being unskilled at politics?I think all his failed opponents also made it past the fourth grade.So he must have something other than fourth-grade skills, no?We are all joking here of course.

I guess we can say the system isn't perfect. The sainted, but limited, voice of the people has given us two potential candidates with unbelievable unfavorables. We are screwed! Does Cruz (the miserable son of a bitch) have even lower unfavorables ? Luckily, I live in Texas and can stay home and not feel like I'm casting a vote for Hillary.

Trump isn't my guy but he is a businessman so he isn't going to go Socialist and kill the economy. As for Hillary Clinton not only is she a champagne Socialist (with exemptions for the vanguard) but she is likely to do wag the dog to divert attention from her disastrous governance.

Don't all smart politicians have an obsession with hand sanitizer? If not, they should.

They are going around shaking the hands of people they have no idea who they are. Most are just ordinary folks with no illnesses but where have their hands been? Some will have cold, flu or other stuff. Some, like bioterrorist Dan Savage will purposely cough on their hands prior to shaking the pols in hope of infection.

I remember Bush used to have a guy who would follow him around. Bush would shake a hand or two, reach behind and get a spritz, shake some omre hands and so on.

This election is going to completely change party affiliations and remake the political map.

1. Democrats are going to run a Democrat that has supported every war we have had the last 2 decades. The Republicans are going to run a candidate that said the overriding principle of his foreign policy is America First and said the Iraq war was a mistake.

2. Democrats are going to run a "feminist" who couldn't be any less feminine. Her only claim to power is she married Bill. She is a mediocre political talent that performs more poorly as time moves forward. By the end of the campaign she will be defined as an enabler for a serial assaulter of women. Millennial women and the Eloi we call millennial men already hate her and coupled with hillary's warmongering will leave the democrats for a generation. Expect a far left 3rd party.

3. If Cruz refuses to get on board with Trump the conservatives will be out of the republican party and be irrelevant for a generation. This 5-10% of the population that wants small government until it is time to monitor bathroom attendance and stick pregnant women in jail until they have their baby will be an afterthought. There wont be enough of them for a third party and with the "Make America Mexico chants" in full swing expect many of them to join the fight.

4. The political class will only have control over the Democrat party. The republican party will forever be free of their influence and will never look back from a nationalist Americans first perspective. Democrats will get all of the money and be the party of the plutarchs. Many of the faceless GOPe apparatchiks will join them.

5. The media will serve the people that watch them. Candidates that inspire the peons will get airtime and with skill be able to set the rules for participation. To get ratings the media will give candidates like Trump unfiltered access to their supporters.

Hoover had not been either a businessman or an engineer since August 1914. He sold up his mining partnerships and spent a lot of his own money and, more importantly his skills and time, saving 20 million Europeans from Starvation. First as a private citizen. Then, when the US entered the war, as a dollar a year govt employee.

He lived quite comfortably for 50 years on his investments made from his success prior to 1914. Not bad for a HS dropout.

My point being, when the depression hit Hoover relied solely on his dividends and bond coupons for income. He had more too lose than trump, who is a fairly active investor does.

Except that the baby-killing is an everyday reality and the mushroom clouds merely a possibility every day since the dust settled at Nagasaki. Evaluating choices like this is a valuable life skill. And yes, the choices generally both suck but I'll eat dark chocolate rather than dogshit if that's all I'm presented with.

But calling someone "Baby Satan" wasn't an insult because...Saint Croix said...I was king of the insults! But as I went through life I discovered that it's not that rewarding a pursuit, and I dropped it.

John Henry I'm not saying that Hoover wasn't an admirable man in many respects. However he was not a good president in economic terms.That said the back and forth is whether or not Trump would be more dangerous than Hillary in both economic terms and in policy terms and there is no plausible scenario where he is. We have plenty of evidence that Hillary is a paranoid control freak and has no real grasp of foreign policy and has no understanding of how legitimate business and investment works. While I hope pulls it off if given the choice between Trump and Clinton in November I'll go with the businessman and buffoon in a heartbeat over the grifter and felonious traitor communist.

Hoover was infected with the idea, common at the time, that scientific management could run a business or a country to the great benefit of all. Most of those theories have been supplanted by more realistic management techniques, both in practice and in academic literature.

Women are peace and men are war. Peace needs to soothe war. War needs to defend peace.

Sometimes war declares war on peace. And peace is in trouble, real trouble. But then war steps in, between war and peace. And war says, "I'm not messing with you, war. I just want to fuck up peace a little." And war says, "Fuck you, war. I'm defending peace." And war declares war on war. And after war gets his ass handed to him on a hat, war is like "Oh fuck, oh shit, peace! Peace!"

And war says, "Fuckin' A, peace. Peace is awesome." And peace is standing there all smug, going, "I told you, I told you. Why don't you listen to me?" And war says, "I listen. What the fuck do you think I'm doing? I'm defending you." And peace says, "You're using war!" And war says, "Fuckin' A." And peace says, "War is wrong." And war says, "Don't be so cranky." And peace says, "War is wrong! War is wrong!" And war says, "You're not being peaceful." And peace says, "What the fuck do you know about peace?" And war says, "It's good. I like peace. What do you know about war?" And peace says, "I hate it! War sucks!" And war says, "I know." And war starts feeling sorry for himself and peace has to give him a hug.

Your comment is probably what depresses me the most about this election. If your prediction comes true then It really is true - all that talk about limited, small government really was false for most Republicans and guys like me who just want a boring President who does his/her job quietly within the realm of constitutional restrictions amid a three-branch system where the branches truly do check and balance each other - all a pipe-dream. It's activism and deficits and exploding debt forever, all in the arena of never-ending cults of personality and mounting authoritarianism.

It's not about following the constitution, it's just a never ending Darwinian struggle to make sure whoever the latest strong man is is your guy.

shiloh said...Let the record show MK did not disagree with Mark, rather MK replied with an infantile retort.

Let the record also show that Mark called Donald Trump an "infantile crybaby" in absentia and that shilho had no objection. The chronology of statements in the record is key to unravelling who is a bad faith character.